Maybe I'd get a Dodge Charger. That's the thought that got stuck in the craw of my brain while driving the old Chevy that afternoon to the blood plasma center to get my fifty bucks. What would that make me, if I had a Dodge Charger? What kind of people drive Chargers? I'd been given one as a rental once, leaving Chicago and headed northwest on 90 and that car could really go. The Hemi. I took it all the way out to Verne and slept through the movie at the Drive-In. How is that was ten years ago?
Crossing the overpass yields a clear view over the streets all the way to the mountains, a panoramic clarity free of fog and dust after this afternoon's rainstorm, the mountains shining like newly washed cars. Puddles in the road. I stayed home an extra hour reading by the air conditoner and drinking two of the green IPAs. I was reading a fantasy bildungsroman set in a world where people started inexplicably losing their balance and falling down and those that remained upright throughout developed a saintly semblance to the others. I'd stopped at the onset of a sex scene and driven off. Visits to the blood plasma center typically took three hours round trip and I wanted to be back in time to make dinner at a reasonable hour.
The old Chevy has a compliment of CDs, newly supplemented by some purchases at the Goodwill of Hot Fuss, by The Killers. I put it on and am transported back twenty years as I make my way into the city, marvelling, behind my red-tinted sunglasses, at the wary lanes of stand-still traffic going in the opposite direction. I roll the windows down and rest my arm outside letting the wind cool off my armpits.
I love the static fuzz at the end of track one. How did they do that? In post? What is he even singing about, gotta gotta be down because I want it all, and is it "Wally's having a smoke," or "while he's having a smoke?" Who's Wally? If I'd brought my phone I would have checked but I left it behind to charge, there's something wrong with my charger, and also to allow me time to finish reading the falling down book. Destiny is calling me. Audacious. I never. I never. I neverrrr. Never what? Why is he repeating this?
The AC in the old Chevy doesn't work, so the rolled-down window is my only cool air. Maybe if I had a Dodge Charger I could sit in the AC and cruise. Maybe I could meet a girl. What kind of girl is attracted to a guy who drives a Dodge Charger? Probably not my kind of girl. I imagine her knowing a lot about cars and being compellingly coarse in social situations. I tended to blend into the backwash, something that's been pointed out to me recently along with the advice to follow my anger instead of surpressing it. I wish I could meet someone pleasant.
I stop the CD at All These Things that I'd Done while pulling into the parking lot in front of the blood plasma center. That would be a good song to queue up for the ride home. The outside air feels luminous, still heavy with moisture. I carry my book, admire the newly planted trees by the condos, anticipating the sadness held in their young stickly stalks, the treacherous promise of aging there together and someday dying all in a row. Inside the cold astringent air stings there's a line that zigs and zags and I make my way to the end of it and stand uncomfortably for a few minutes looking at my shoes until another number is called and everyone takes a few steps forward and I can lean against the wall while I wait. The world has a lot more mysteries when you leave your phone at home. You have to read the signs, look for clues, look out the window, daydream. "Don't think so hard," says the portly man in line behind me, "you'll hurt yourself."
"Yeah, that happens," I smile, "I get red hot." The people here cross all kinds of demographic intersectionalities. It's impolite to stare, that's why almost everyone brings their phones and stares at those instead. I found that it's a good quiet time to read without interuption when I started coming here during the pandemic and it, for a time, became my one and only social interaction for an entire week, my one reverie within a grindingly mechanical year. Go give blood plasma, read for an hour, stop by the store for groceries on the way home, lock the door for another 7 days. The white robed phlebotomy staff still all wear masks, and some of them even wear face shields. On the walls the posters remain unchanged, Your Donation of Blood Plasma Saves Lives, Be a Hero - Give Plasma. I remember looking at that same poster during the pandemic because it features a little masked boy in a cape with his arms outretched like superman and I motioned to it as a staffer prepped my arm with iodine and told her, from behind my mask, that he had his mask on wrong.
"Uh huh," she had said. "Tight fist please." I had thought it was clever. I still thought so. We all shuffled forward a few more steps. The blood plasma process involves insertion of a needle, keeping your arm straight and pumping your fist at frequent intervals, then laying lax while the machine returns the red blood to your arm and retains the plasma. This process repeats about eight or nine times I think. I've never counted. It lasts, once the needle is in, a little less than an hour. It lasts enough time to read two chapter or play nine levels of Candy Crush. It lasts until they have collected 880 millileters.I got out my book.
People kept losing their balance. People kept falling down. On the way to class, standing in line at the grocery store. It was happening to everyone. The doctors were confounded, speculating on causes ranging from dust particulates to solar magnetic polarization, but since their clinics were booked out for months the problem became a political one and that fall's election was notable for the number of candidates who fell from their platforms espousing potential solutions to the doctor shortage. It was happening to everyone and so those of us who had not yet fallen began to take on a certain aura of otherworldliness, although what we ourselves felt was a buzz of fearful precarity.
The truth was that I had fallen, just not literally. We met when we were both helping an old woman up by the bus stop.
"I'm so sorry! I'm so so sorry!" she said repeatedly.
"It's alright," we told her in unison. I looked up. Eyes filled with stars, mahogony brown hair...
It went on with broad strokes like that for a few pages, then changed tack. Just as I was confirming my disinterest the machine beeped and I was done.
"Thank you for your donation," she said as she retrieved the needle from my arm and pressed a wad of gauze to the site, which I proceeded to hold there so she could put the needle and tubing away and grab a roll of medical tape to wrap me up.
Walking back to the old Chevy I let down the tailgait to sit and smoke a cigarette and read some more.
The sky was a low and gray, oppressive. I could feel it as a pointed weight against my shoulders. I stood at the edge of the park, hands stuffed deep into my pockets, watching people fall. There was no longer any commotion to it, people took it in stride, so to speak, silenting crumbling, getting back up, a collective resignation settling over everyone like a thick fog.
My phone vibrated and I pulled it out, staring at the screen as if it held the answers. There it was, a single text from her, the one that had changed everything: I’m pregnant. I read it again, trying to wrap my mind around a reality that was both beautiful and absurd. How could life rise up when everything else seemed to be falling down?
The playground behind me was eerily empty, the swings swaying gently in the breeze. I imagined children laughing, the sound bright and alive against the backdrop of uncertainty. But that laughter was absent, leaving only the rustle of leaves, the woosh of cars, the distant hum of sirens.
I leaned against a tree, the bark rough against my back, grounding. A couple walked by, eyes glued to their phones, oblivious to the world around them. The woman fell. The man stopped but his eyes didn't leave the screen, nor did he help her up. What could he do? It was all so mundane now, she slowly got herself back on her feet and dusted off her phone by herself and they continued. It was like watching the last flickers of a dying bulb. I looked at my own phone again. The text message seemed to almost pulse with a flicker of hope—a tiny life that could brighten all this gray.Then she called out my name. She was there, her voice breaking through the haze, vibrant and real. She was running toward me, her hair catching the wind, a wild halo, I ran to meet her, to hold her. There was a sparkle in her eyes that cut through the heaviness, and for a moment, I could almost forget the world was falling apart.
“Did you get my message?” she asked, breathless, a smile spreading across her face.
“Yeah,” I replied, trying to summon a smile in return. “I did.”
“And? Are you... what do...?” concern etching her brow.
“I... we...” I brushed the hair from her eyes, feeling the warmth of her skin, the shape of her head. “I mean, the risks...”
Her gaze held steady. “We have to believe in something, right? It might be the end of the world, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try.”
I could feel myself nodding unsteadily, the warmth of her words roping around me like a lifeline. In the midst of chaos, we would carve out a space for hope, for laughter...
Driving a different route back home, through an old town neighborhood of hundred year old homes, frequent stop signs, and small parks dotted with homeless people huddled in the shade of their shopping carts full of tarped stuff. What if I opened a store in this neighborhood. Would I be any good at interacting with the crazies, their tattooed chests and neurosis. How can one focus on the desiderata of life when distracted by so many socioeconomic problems?
How many girls are mentioned on Hot Fuss? (Believe me) Natalie, Jenny (was a friend of mine), Annie (you're a star), (Oh) Girl (someday you'll understand)... how long did it take Brandon Flowers to burn through enough relationships to fuel the lyrics for this album?
The moon makes a pre-sunset power appearance in the pink sky high above some raspy eucalyptus trees. Did you know the moon moves about an inch and a half away from the earth each year? Was it something we did? I kind of feel that I should take that fact as reflective of some kind of personal distaste for me, for us, earthkind. Earthkind is a compound word I just made up. Like Mr Brightside.
And we don't mean to satisfy tonight
So get your eyes off of my pride tonight
'Cause I don't need to satisfy tonight
It's like a cigarette in the mouth
Or a handshake in the doorway
I look at you and smile because I'm fine
Where did that term even come from, I wonder. Is it Brightsides or Brightside, singular? What does any of this mean? I suppose their musicality is better than their lyrics, on re-listening to this. Why did this speak to me twenty years ago? Does it speak to me now because it spoke to me then, or is there something new?
The gas station didn't have any of the green kind so I pick up two tall blue IPAs instead. Funny how the world takes on a different lustre, a new auratic sensibility, when you switch from one kind of beer to another mid-session. Outside parked next to the truck is a gray Dodge Charger. What would my commute home be like driving that? The sun is gone before is shines. Yep, I've had those kinds of days.
About a mile from I I realize that I am looking at the world through two different layers of glass, my sunglasses and the dirty windshield. This is an appropriate metaphor for the layers I impose upon my own perceptions, I think. I need to take all these layers of glass out of my field of vision and see the world the way it really is. What colors are there that I've been missing, what haven't I been able to see thanks to my own hubris? I should try something new. Try something old again, but really try this time. I should see how much Dodge Chargers are going for. I'm going to do it. As soon as I get home I'm going to do it.
Labels: brandon flowers' hairsalon, candy crush, diamond needles, dodge charger, field of sky, gray, null karma, old chevy, sangre de rana, socioeconomic polka, stifling, the killers
